Pursuit of death penalty doesn't ease mother's pain

DA's effort failed to get two lifers on death row - but added two more years of reliving daughter's murder.

Posted: Sunday, January 14, 2001

Betty Slater lived a mother's worst nightmare.

In the summer of 1995, her daughter's family moved back to south Georgia from Alaska, where her son-in-law had been stationed with the Coast Guard.

Two weeks later, while locking up a convenience store after her first night on the job, Slater's daughter disappeared. Mary Ann Prescott, a 28-year-old mother of two, was found shot to death the next day near a pond in a remote area of Long County. Her burned minivan was discovered in a Florida field.

Within days, three migrant workers were charged with her murder. But justice wouldn't come for years, and then only at a steep price.

Jorge Ivan Torres, David Cordova and Jose Vaca first faced murder charges in federal court; carjacking is a federal offense. Slater began driving back and forth to Brunswick from her home in Stillmore to attend the meetings and hearings.

Threatened with the death penalty, Torres and Cordova pleaded guilty in late 1997. They were sentenced to life in prison without parole. Vaca, a juvenile, was prosecuted on a lesser charge.

The sentences gave Slater a measure of peace. Executing the men wouldn't have brought her daughter back or erased her awful memories.

"They weren't going to ever get out," Slater said. "I thought they'd get more punishment if they spent their lives in prison."

But the Atlantic Judicial Circuit's District Attorney, Dupont Cheney, felt differently. The men still had to be tried in state court - and he wanted to see them on death row.

Slater said Cheney never talked to her about whether she wanted them to face the death penalty, though her daughter's husband, Toby Prescott, did want to see the men executed.

Cheney, now retired, said that regardless of Slater's wishes, it would have been difficult for him not to seek the death penalty.

"It was very brutal, a very heartless act. It's one thing to rob someone, walk into a store and shoot a clerk," he said. "It's another to drag a woman down to a lake, make her beg for her life and shoot her anyway."

So Slater readied herself for more hearings and more trips, this time to the Ludowici courthouse. It still irks her that witnesses' expenses were paid while she had to take off work and pay out of her own pocket.

Then the case hit a major snag. The grand jury's murder indictment was overturned because there were no Hispanics on the jury. So the family waited for another grand jury to be assembled.

As years passed, Slater and her son-in-law grew more and more frustrated. Both wanted it over.

"They dragged it out so long," Slater said.

Slater started hearing talk about the cost of the case. The sheriff mentioned there were hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills piling up, she said. Others said the county was going bankrupt and had to borrow money from the state.

Cheney acknowledged that the case, which his former assistant and now District Attorney Tom Durden handled, did take an "abnormally long time," partly because of the grand jury snafu.

In the end, the trial jury didn't grant Durden and Cheney's wish. They found Torres guilty, but sentenced him to life without parole, not death. His partners ended up pleading guilty. In May 1999, Cordova was sentenced to life without parole. Vaca got 20 years for participating in the robbery.

The cases cost the county $467,000, according to Long County administrator Richard Douglas. But price tag aside, Cheney said he would probably do the same thing again.

"I feel like it was the right decision," he said. "Hindsight may be 20-20, but you still do what you think is right to start with."

If Slater had her way, the punishment would have been simple and cheap: Torres would have to look every day at the police photograph of her daughter's body, an image burned into her memory.

"When they took her out and murdered her like they did, and stripped her clothes off and stuck the Kotex in her mouth, it's more than I...," Slater's tears interrupted her words. But she quickly composed herself.

"They didn't show the picture to Torres. They ought to put it in his cell. But I don't wish anybody to die."

Region reporter Kate Wiltrout can be reached at 652-0397 or by e-mail at katew@savannahnow.com.